Philip Seymour Hoffman was the cover boy for this weekend’s New York Times Magazine, and the article is delicious for a Hoffman-head such as myself. In the lengthy interview, Hoffman talks about his early career, his theatre work, his family and new movie Doubt (also starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams). While interviewed, Hoffman was directing a play in London called “Riflemind” written by Andrew Upton, Cate Blanchett’s husband. And it’s no coincidence.

[Hoffman] was sitting in the fifth row of the audience at Trafalgar Studios in the West End, where he was directing “Riflemind” (a play about an ’80s rock band that may or may not reunite after 20 years)…[he] took a gulp of coffee from a large cup that he was holding in a brown paper bag. He turned his attention to the stage, where two actors were rehearsing a sex scene. “Riflemind,” which unfolds over a weekend, is a self-conscious study in wounds: long-simmering battles are reignited and secrets are revealed. The play has a predictable middle-aged-angst narrative that is somewhat glamorized by its rock-star milieu: the drugs may be stronger, but the emotions are oddly detached.

Hoffman’s fascination with “Riflemind” — he directed it in Sydney, Australia, last year and, when we met, had been in London for several weeks preparing this production — can be explained by both his commitment to theater and by the fact that the play is written by Andrew Upton, the husband of Cate Blanchett. Hoffman met Upton and Blanchett when he appeared with her in “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” “On that movie, we shot only one or two days a week,” Hoffman recalled. “Much of the time, I was in Rome with Cate and Andrew. I have a hard time having fun, but that was heaven. And I must really like Andrew — my girlfriend, who is in New York, is about to have our third child, and I am here.” Hoffman paused. “I don’t get nervous when I’m directing a play. It’s not like acting. If this fails, I wouldn’t be as upset by it.”

[From The NY Times]

Why aren’t they in more films together? Cate Blanchett and Philip Seymour Hoffman should just make movies together, they’re both so lovely. The article goes in-depth with Hoffman’s theatre experiences, and he makes an interesting comment about his time playing Jamie Tyrone in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” on Broadway – Hoffman says “That nearly killed me.” Hoffman-head trivia: Jason Robards was the actor to originate the role of Jamie Tyrone on Broadway; Hoffman and Robards worked together on my favorite Hoffman film, Magnolia. It was Robards’ last film role.

The main part of the article is about Doubt, and it’s obvious from the interviews that Doubt author John Patrick Shanley and Meryl Streep love Hoffman.

Hoffman is not a carefree person; he resolutely refuses to live lightly. “Phil is hard to know,” John Patrick Shanley [Doubt’s author] said. “Phil and his longtime girlfriend, Mimi [O’Donnell], came to a party at my house, and he had on three coats and a hat. I said, ‘Take off one of your coats; it’s hot in here.’ His girlfriend said, ‘He’ll maybe take it off in a half-hour.’ It’s such an obvious metaphor, but Phil has a protective cocoon that he sheds very slowly. It takes him a while to make friends with his environment. And yet you know the men he plays the minute you meet them.”

Still, he knows he will not be remembered for his real-life persona but rather for the characters he has chosen to embody. In “Doubt,” for instance, which was originally a play, he is a Catholic priest who may or may not have been inappropriate with a young male student. He is suspected and accused by the principal of the parish school, a nun named Sister Aloysius, played by Meryl Streep. “If I asked 10 people on the subway who I should cast for the older nun, they’d all say Meryl,” Shanley told me. “But I didn’t know what Phil would do with the part of Father Flynn, and that intrigued me. I did know that he would make Meryl sweat, that she would be up against someone of equal intelligence. Meryl is a street fighter, and she schemes as an actress — she wants to win the scene. Phil won’t play that way. He won’t engage. Before their big confrontation scene, Meryl would be muttering ‘I’m going to kick his butt’ for the entire crew to hear. She’d look at him and say, ‘I know you did it.’ And Phil would just laugh and say, ‘Meryl’s always trying to get in my head.’ ”

[From The New York Times]

Doubt looks really good, and I’m sure it will rack up several Oscar nominations, most likely for Hoffman and Streep. Next up for Hoffman is another stage role – he’s going to be playing Iago to John Ortiz’s Othello. Hoffman has a really good line, one I wish more actors would say: “I’ve never been all that interested in playing Hamlet” Hoffman also has an interesting interpretation of the characters: “To my mind, Iago actually loves Othello. And it’s hard not to think of Obama when you read ‘Othello’ now.” Yikes. I hope other people won’t draw those parallels.

Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman are shown on 12/7/08 at the NY premiere of Doubt. Credit: WENN